The BMW Group is building a high-voltage battery assembly for the vehicles of the NEUE KLASSE at its site in Hungary. The battery assembly will be located on the site of the Debrecen vehicle plant, which started construction about six months ago.
The company will create more than 500 additional jobs and invest over two billion euros in the construction and launch of the entire plant by the end of 2025. Hungary’s government will provide 13.5 billion forints (€33 million) of non-refundable subsidy for the additional investment, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said at a press conference.
The plant, together with local partners in education, will launch a dual education programme in autumn 2023 at its in-house Training Centre.
The assembly of high-voltage batteries will be located on the site of the Debrecen vehicle plant. The next-generation round battery cells will be assembled into a battery housing – a metal frame, which is later integrated into the underbody of the car. The official start of production for the sixth generation high-voltage batteries will be in 2025 – in parallel with the start of vehicle production.
All batteries for the vehicles from Plant Debrecen will be assembled on site. The new production facility will extend over an area of about 140,000 m². Construction work recently began.
The battery is decisive for the competitiveness of electric vehicles. With the next generation of batteries for the NEUE KLASSE, range will improve by up to 30 percent, and the charging speed will be up to 30 percent faster.
The BMW Group is particularly focused on keeping the carbon footprint and consumption of resources for production as low as possible, starting in the supply chain. Cell manufacturers will use cobalt, lithium and nickel that include a percentage of secondary material, i.e. raw materials that are not newly mined, but already in the loop, in production of battery cells.
Combined with the commitment to use only green power from renewable energies for production of battery cells, the BMW Group will reduce the carbon footprint of battery cell production by up to 60 percent.
